Make it Known

                                                                          Rape.

     No one likes to think about it. And no one really likes to talk about it either. It is an ugly word that is tied to even an uglier action. But what happens when it does happen? Who's going to be the one to think about it? To talk about it? Who is going to do the right thing in such a wrong situation? Or, who should?

     In Friendswood, Willa Lambert is raped but not just one, but several boys while she is unconscious. Willa is only a sophomore in high school. She is quiet and, some think, a little weird. But when Cully Holbrook, the guy Willa is crushing on, who just so happens to be a star senior football player, asks her to leave school for lunch at a friend's house, she, of course, says yes. But she, like most people, don't think lunch means getting drunk, popping pills and raping a drunk, unconscious girl. 

     What those boys did deserves the ugliness of the word rape. They took Willa's virginity. They took her innocence. And, they took Willa's whole being when they used, defiled, and raped her. But now what? Who is going to talk about it? Who is going to speak for Willa? And the answer is: Willa. 

     

Willa has to speak. If she doesn't, what happened to her will go unnoticed and unpunished. What happened to Willa was horrible, but, if she doesn't talk, if she doesn't dispel the lies and tell the truth on what happened, all there will be is speculation and no real consequence. She has to speak for herself. She has to speak on her own behalf to those who should take the issue seriously and do something about it, like her school. The school should give Willa an outlet to speak for herself while also making sure to speak on behalf of Willa, as the victim. Because, what happened to Willa happened during the school hours, by the school's own students. And it only makes sense for the school to recognize this and take interest in what happened to Willa when she was supposed to be under the school's supervision. It is only right that the school take some blame for what they failed to do and what their students did in respect to that failure. And, on behalf of Willa, the school should make sure to punish the boys who did this ugly act to ensure that it is known that the blame is on them, the boys, not on Willa. And if there are those who hold Willa accountable for what happened to her, the school should speak against that and speak to Willa's defense as the victim in this circumstance. 

     

     

To Lie or Not to Lie

To lie or not to lie, that is the question.

                               
Do you lie? Or do you tell the truth?

     

          Well to be honest, there are going to be consequences regardless of what you choose to do. But the severity of the consequences can be made worse or better depending on what you chose. But what is the right thing to do? Is the right thing to lie? To tell the truth? I think the right thing to do is to tell the truth, something Madam Mathilde Loisel in Guy de Maupassant's The Necklace did not do.

                                                     

          Madam Mathilde Loisel seems to be made to experience the luxuries of life, but there was a "mistake of destiny" which bore her into a poor little family of clerks. But Mathilde gets a glimpse into the luxuries she so desires through a necklace of diamonds lent to her by a rich friend, Madame Forestier. The diamond necklace, to Madam Mathilde, symbolizes all that she doesn't have and all that she desires. And when she looses the necklace, instead of telling the truth to Madam Forestier, Mathilde decides to lie and replace the necklace with a new, thirty-six thousand franc, diamond necklace. But the replacement of the necklace did not come without great sacrifice and consequence. Mon. and Mme. Loisel's lives are now debt ridden. There is no pleasure in their lives. Mon. and Mm. Loisel, for ten years, endure agonizing work and drown in the circles and circles of notes until the debt is gone. At the end of the ten years, Mathilde had "become the woman of impoverished households - strong and hard and rough," which is a complete change from the young, delicate, beautiful woman she was before all of this. And she could have stayed just like that, young and beautiful. How? If she had not lied to Mme. Forestier, Mme. Loisel would have known that the necklace she had lost, which she had spent thirty-six thousand francs on was fake and worth, at most, five hundred francs.

         When you lie, you not only avoid your truth, but the other truths involved. If Mathilde had told the truth of losing the necklace in the beginning, she would have known the truth about the necklace. And if she had known the truth of the necklace, her and her husband's lives wouldn't have been taken over and ruined by debt. So, to lie or not to lie. Although telling the truth may be hard to do, I think you can avoid so much if you just come out with it. There's no need to try and hide the mistakes you've made when telling lies is only going to exasperate what you've done when someone eventually finds out the truth or something unnecessary is done because of the lie you told. All in all, lies don't do anything but harm. In the moment, lying may seem like a good idea to avoid something but they always come back around to bite you. And most people who have lied knows this to be true. So, the right thing to do is to tell the truth, despite the consequences you might receive for doing so because those consequences will only be exasperated if you decide to lie. 

          

Colin Kaepernick - Is He Right?

     On September 1, 2016 the San Francisco 49ers' quarterback Colin Kaepernick decided to drop to his knee during the playing of the National Anthem. Kaepernick, in doing this, silently, but also deafeningly, made his protest against the racial prejudices in our country known by kneeling to the anthem as if to plead America to live up to it's preachments.

                                                                                       

              

          "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color...                      To me, this is bigger than football, and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder." 

                                 -Colin Kaepernick

     

     

     Now, Kapernick's decision to make this loud statement against the nation's injustices against minorities was met with, of course, approving and disapproving opinions on whether this was the right thing for him to do. Was it really his place to bring something so political into the game of football? An unsaid understanding amongst athletes is an almost separation of church and state in that politics should be kept out and little should be said as to to avoid offending people. But is there an exception? Could Colin Kaepernick really be doing the right thing? I think, he just might be.

                                                
Because of what he's doing, Colin Kaepernick has been threatened and is said to be"undermining patriotism." But, the way I look at it, Kaepernick is doing anything but that. He is expressing his rights given to him by the First Amendment which guarantees the right to speak freely, or, to sit or stand in this respect. And, in going against the separation of church and state understanding, Kaepernick is able to actually use his power and influence to bring the injustices in the country to light rather than leaving them in the dark. Malcolm Jenkins, the Philadelphia Eagles corner-back and one of the many other NFL players who have taken on this stance with Colin Kaepernick, said: "The worst thing I think you can do as a football player is to have gotten to this stage, had the presence that you've had, and leave this game as just a football player." And Kaepernick, like Jenkins said, is not "just a football player", he is so much more now that he has sparked so many into joining him and has drawn so much attention not so much to himself, but to what he is standing, or rather kneeling, for. 



Gregory, Sean. "The Perilous Fight." Time Magazine. 2016. 38-40. Print. 

     

          

Spike Lee and Malcolm X

                                 
          The 1980's were a time of cultural combativeness and residing prejudices amongst the minority groups in America. More than a decade following the Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968), the racist and prejudiced thinking that men like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King fought to put an end too were still very present in society. This societal fluent prejudice and discrimination was made a recurring topic in numerous film and literature pieces. One piece being Spike Lee's 1989 film Do The Right Thing. 

          In this piece of work, Lee purposely uses the societal stereotypes that many minority groups were held too. In doing this, an atmosphere of undeniable tension and inescapable cultural warfare is created in this small, predominately black, Brooklyn neighborhood. And when not only cultures clash, but power clashes as well, a young black man is murdered by the hands of the police. The question then becomes: What could the "right thing to do" possibly be? Could it be violence? Or could there be another way? 

                                          
          In Lee's piece, once Radio Raheem, the young black man, is murdered by the excessive force of the white police men, violence ensues. An angry mob of distraught black people, with the white police men having fled the scene, target Sal, the man who had been in disagreement with Raheem and who the blame and anger was by default, passed on too. A garbage can is thrown through the window of Sal's pizzeria by one of his own employee's, Mookie, a young black man who knew Raheem and witnessed his death. This one act of violence ignites the already distraught mob and later leads to the loothing and burning of the pizzeria. 

          Malcolm X once said: "...I have to preserve the right to do what is necessary to bring an end to that situation, and it doesn't mean that I advocate violence, but at the same time I am not against using violence in self-defense. I don't even call it violence when it's self-defense. I call it intelligence." This stance on violence can be applied and considered when analyzing the actions of the mob and Mookie in particular. Mookie was the spark that provoked the mob to violence when he threw the garbage can through Sal's window. But was this violence justified? Could it really have been the "right thing" to do? And, in looking at Malcolm X's quote, one could argue that yes, the violence was in fact justified. The violence was in defense of a young man who is now dead because of people's unrest and prejudice. It wasn't in "self-defense" as Malcolm X states, but how is a man who is already dead defend himself from the injustices that took his life? 

          In the end, doing the right thing is not as black and white as one might hope. It's ambiguous. It's open to a wide range of morals and beliefs that varies from one individual to the next. So the question still remains: What could the "right thing to do" possibly be?